by Cathy Lamb
Caden found Marla crying one night, her head on the washing machine as it ran. She said, “Caden, I can’t stop crying,” and indeed she couldn’t. She was exhausted down to nothing. Then one of the triplets started crying, the second one chimed in . . . and that was it. Marla walked upstairs, still crying because she couldn’t stop, packed two suitcases, climbed in her car, and left.
He pleaded, he begged, and she turned her cell phone off, and no one could get in touch with her for two weeks. She finally called her parents, who were frantic with worry. She had driven to a tiny town in Montana, stopped at a hotel, and slept for a week. She was going to be a waitress. She would send child support. She was not returning.
Marla snapped. She absolutely lost it. The exhaustion and the relentlessness of taking care of three babies and Damini blew her apart. She couldn’t do it. My brother is still not over losing her. He blames himself. He had his business to run but feels he did not help enough, even though I know he was up most of the night, too.
The triplets and Damini have no mother, so I have stepped in, as has my mother, to form two mothers for them. Caden has stepped in, from day one, to be a dad to Tate. That pathetic irony is not lost on us.
“Can we see Slinky?” Harvey said. Slinky is Tate’s lizard. “He called us. He wants to play.”
“Slinky the lizard called you on the phone?” I asked.
Harvey nodded. “I think. I think it him.”
“I didn’t know that Slinky knew how to dial a phone.” I shook my head in wonder.
“He smart lizard,” Heloise said. “Smart like a cat!”
“He call me on the phone!” Hazel said. “Meow meow meow!”
“Slinky want banana,” Harvey said, pointing at himself.
“A genius lizard, obviously,” I said. “Does your daddy know you’re here?”
They wriggled. I tried not to laugh.
“You told your daddy you were coming to visit Slinky, right?”
They squiggled.
“We want to see Slinky the lizard,” Harvey the banana said. “And Tate. Tate home?”
“Tate is home. What’s your daddy doing?”
They shuffled and twisted.
“He tired.”
“Sleepy.”
“He taking nap. Night night.”
“Nap time for Daddy,” Hazel whispered through the dragon teeth. “We quiet.”
“Yeah, we tiptoe tiptoe out da door.” Heloise squeaked like a mouse. “See Slinky now?”
“And Tate. Where Tate? I play goblins with him.” Harvey smiled.
“I love Tate!” Hazel grabbed the pink tongue of her dragon outfit.
“Me, too,” Heloise said. She swung her cat tail.
“But not the letter V,” Harvey said. “That bad letter. H. We like H.”
“H for Heloise and Harvey and Hazel,” Hazel said, pointing at each triplet. “H. Good letter.”
“You three didn’t tell your daddy you were coming down here.” They were naughty, darling kids.
Heloise pulled on her elephant trunk. “He sleep. Have dreams. Sweet dreams, night night. We go tiptoe tiptoe and we be back soon. Meow meow!”
“Come on.” I stuck out my hands.
“Where we going?” Hazel said.
“Where do you think, Hazel?”
Her dragon hat slid down her face. I pulled it back up.
I took their little hands and we strolled through the maple trees, the leaves fluttering, down the road to Caden’s house. We stopped a few times to stare at bugs and birds. Caden’s house is a sprawling, craftsman-style home. His property is the same as mine—fields, an old orchard, fir and pine trees, and the flowers we all grow as a family.
When we walked through the front door, I saw Caden crashed on the sofa, as I’d suspected. He and his employees had had a wedding for four hundred this weekend in the city and each table had a dog or cat made of flowers because the bride and groom were vets.
“Come on, guys. Let’s go outside.” We went to their backyard. Caden has ten acres, too. He’s fenced about an acre for the triplets. There’s a full playground out there with a slide, swings, professionally built tree house, and a pirate ship. For the next three hours I watched the triplets. At the end of three hours, Caden came racing out, panicked, his hair plastered to his face, that hysterical expression in his eyes that parents get when they can’t instantly find their children.
“It’s okay, Caden, I have the miniature troublemakers.”
Caden bent over, tried to catch his breath, and swore quietly, his huge chest heaving in and out.
I heard them giggle. They were running around playing Red Monster. It’s a game they made up. It means take off your clothes and run and roar like a monster.
I laughed.
Caden dropped his head in his hands. “Good Lord. I cringe thinking what the teenage years are going to be like.”
I watched the triplets run naked, in circles, roaring like monsters.
“You’re gonna have a hell of a time.”
“V pee!” Hazel screamed. “V pee!”
5
“Mom, I gotta talk to you.”
Tate grabbed a white wicker chair and pulled it close to mine on the porch.
Ahead of us, the sun was going down. Somehow it appeared that we had two suns headed to the horizon separated by blue, gray, and pink streaks across the sky. I pulled my blue fuzzy blanket closer around my shoulders.
“Take a second for the sunset, Tate.”
“Yeah, it’s nice. Okay, uh, Mom.”
“Three stripes of pink.”
“Cool. Hey—”
“It’s like watching natural, outdoorsy magic. New scene. New colors. New design.”
“Yeah, awesome. Uh. New topic.” He poked my arm.
“You poked me.” I poked him back.
“I know. I did. By the way, I’m still hungry.”
“You have to be kidding. You had two huge bowls of roasted clam chowder, half a loaf of garlic bread, two oranges, and chocolate cake.”
“I know, but that was an hour ago. I’m hungry again. Can you make me Nothing Fancy Spaghetti From The Old Days with Parmesan?”
“Argh.”
“Thanks, Boss Mom. Tastes better when you make it. Yeah. You know, I’ve been practicing basketball.”
“No, again.”
“And, Mom, also, in PE the teacher has seen me shooting in gym and, uh, he had the basketball coach come in and watch. You know, Mr. Boynton.”
“No again, Tate.”
“And the coach, he’s, uh . . . he’s gonna call you.”
“And I’ll tell him you can’t try out.”
He leaned toward me, those bright blue eyes eager. “I want you to tell him I can try out.”
“I’ve heard that loud and clear,” I snapped.
“Mom!”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling, but I want you to listen to me, please, Mom, just listen.”
“I have listened. The answer is still no.”
He stood up, said, “Damn it,” and his chair fell over.
My mouth dropped. Tate rarely gets mad. I think he’s had too many people say too many mean things to him from an early age and the anger burned right on out of him. Plus, he’s an easygoing guy.
“I want to try out! Don’t you get it, Mom?” He threw out his hands. “I love basketball. I love it. I love shooting the ball and passing it, or at least pretending I’m passing it when I’m playing by myself. I love pretending I’m a defender, I love pretending someone is defending me, and I love watching it.”
“Then watch it, you’re not playing on a team.”
“I want to—”
“You could hurt yourself, the shunt—”
“Even Dr. Robbins said I could play. He said there’s no guarantee, but it would probably be fine, and I’m not going to get hurt!” he shouted.
“You don’t know you won’t get hurt, Dr. Robbins doesn’t know that—”
&
nbsp; “Mom, if I’m on the basketball team, then I might . . .”
“You might what?”
He brushed his auburn curls off his head in frustration with both hands. “I might—”
“Yes?”
“I might, in some small way”—his face tightened up and he wiped away tears—“I might belong.”
I closed my eyes. Oh, how it hurts a mother’s heart to have their child feel that they don’t belong.
“Mom, think about it. I could wear a uniform. I could be on a team. I could get to know more people. I could play in front of other kids, and it would make me seem more normal. Maybe I could even be good at it. I could make a basket or two in a game.”
“Tate, it’s not a huge school. All the kids know you.”
“They know me as the bigheaded kid. A lot of kids can’t even look at me. Or they look at me and they think I’m ugly, don’t deny it, Mom. They’ve got these looks of disgust on their faces, or they stare. Some kids are past it, but not many. They can’t get past General Noggin, they don’t know how to handle me, what to say. I’m not a person yet to them. You know, a human with feelings and emotions. I’m a thing.”
The pain in my chest was so piercing I had to force myself to take a breath. “Tate, you can’t measure yourself by basketball—”
“Why not, Mom? Why not?” His voice cracked. “Everyone measures themselves, values themselves for something. Being a neurosurgeon. Having a family. Relationships. Why not basketball? I’m not saying I want to go and drink beer or smoke pot, I want to be on the basketball team.”
“Tate, I’d love you to be able to, but no—”
The phone rang.
“That’s the coach, Mom, please please please!” He grabbed my arm, then hugged me, his arms wrapping me up. “Please! Come on, Mom!”
I stalked into the house and picked up the phone. It was, indeed, Coach Boynton. I listened. I talked. He listened. He talked.
“No, he can’t. I’m sorry . . . I understand he has some talent . . . okay, a lot of talent.... I know he wants to.... There are medical concerns.... Hey, Robert, my answer is no.... I’m not arguing with you on this.... I know you didn’t mean to be pushy, and I know you want Tate on the team.... You can win a championship without him. . . . I know you feel it in your bones that Tate will help you win, Robert, and it’s too bad for your old bones.... Yes, I’ll tell my mother hello. You tell your patient wife who puts up with so much crap from you hello, too.”
“Mom!” Tate wailed when I hung up the phone. “Mom! Come on, Mom!”
“Tate!” I slammed a mug on the counter and it shattered. “Don’t ask me again, we’re not talking about this again, we’re done. Done!”
“No, we are not done, Witch Mavis, you are overprotective and you’re . . . you’re mean, and you’re not letting me live my life and you’re making me feel like nothing. Like nothing! All I want to do is be normal.”
“You’re not normal!” My voice went up an octave, and I took a breath to calm myself down. “You’re not. Not only because of your head but because of how smart you are. You could be in college by now. You’re a genius and you want to risk losing that, risk losing that brilliant mind because you get hurt on a basketball court? For a ball? For a basket? No.”
“My real mom would let me play basketball.”
I had to force air in as ragged, harsh emotions threatened to swamp me like a sneaker wave. His real mom? Did he mean the mom who abandoned him at birth? The one who walked out? The one whom we hadn’t heard from in so long, I couldn’t remember exactly when we’d last talked? “That’s a low blow, Tate.”
“But she would, I know she would.” His face was red.
I grabbed a sponge and scrubbed the counter furiously.
“She would be a lot nicer about it. The people I talked to about the Other Mother said she was nice when she wasn’t messed up with drugs.”
I scrubbed more furiously.
“She would get it, you don’t, because you’re not trying to see what I’m saying. I’m always on the outside, Boss Mom, and only one time, this time, I want to be on the inside. I want to be part of something. I want to have somewhere to go after school. I want to have somewhere to be on a Friday night instead of alone. I want to get all sweaty and play basketball and try to win games! I want to be in high school, a normal high school kid, and be called up front during assemblies when they introduce the basketball team. . . .”
I scrubbed until my arm ached.
“I bet Brooke would be a better mother, Boss Mom, and I’d be playing basketball!”
Now that did it. I threw the sponge across the room. Witch Mavis was flaming. “Tate, your Other Mother would not be a better mother. Your Other Mother is on drugs. She is selfish and irresponsible and weak. If she was raising you, you would probably hardly ever see her and be living in some hovel amidst drug paraphernalia and creepy men. Don’t you ever, ever tell me that Brooke would be a better mother to you when you’re trying to get your way, don’t you ever do that again.”
He slapped his hands to his face.
“I am your real mother, Tate. I will always be your real mother.” I was semi-shouting. “Your Other Mother is my sister and she’s a lousy sister and she’s a lousy daughter and she’s a lousy mother. I am the one who has happily taken care of you your whole life—”
“And you’re a good mom but not about this! About this you’re a bad mother!”
“I am not a bad mother—”
“Yes, you are, yes, you are!” His blue eyes became brighter with tears. “God, Mom, it’s the only thing I want, the only thing!” He turned around, ran to the front door, and took off.
“Tate! Tate! Where are you going?”
I yelled at him to stop, but didn’t stop. He ran down the street full blast.
I leaned against the doorjamb.
He did not come back until one o’clock in the morning. When he came back, he shot hoops for two hours and ignored me.
“I want to play basketball, Mom.” He walked past me, calmly, and went upstairs to bed.
“He’s beyond brilliant.”
I nodded my head at the teachers seated in a circle. “Tate’s pretty sharp.”
My comment was an understatement. Tate is brilliant, but I do not brag about his academic accomplishments. Frankly, parents who brag about their children are obnoxious. I think they’re using their own kid to show off their prowess as parents. Come on. The kid’s a person, not a commodity to throw around for cheap praise.
“Tate is much more than pretty sharp,” Ike Shimolo, his science teacher, said to me, running a hand over his bald head. “He’s a genius. I gave him a practice SAT test yesterday in class, told him to have fun with it. I checked it today. He didn’t miss any. I gave him a practice AP Calculus and AP Chem test, too, and he aced both.”
“He thinks tests are fun. He always has. He’s been taking practice SAT tests for years.” I did not say that he started taking SAT subject tests in sixth grade for “amusement challenges,” Tate’s words, not mine.
My mother crossed her thin legs. She did not have to be in Hollywood until tomorrow. She was wearing a short blue dress and matching blue four-inch heels, her cleavage peeking out. She called it her Conference with the Teachers Conservative Outfit.
“When he was four we used to study the dictionary together.” My mother opened her eyes, as in, Isn’t that strange? “I wanted to take him out for a beer, but no. He wanted to sit for hours studying words and having me quiz him. He’s a bizarrely odd child, freakishly smart. What to do, what to do?”
The teachers appeared a bit baffled at my mother’s comments, not to mention her star status, so I hurried on in. The teachers had not been expecting a soap opera star this afternoon. “He likes the academic part of school,” I said. “He likes to study. He actually reads the textbooks.”
“I’ve seen him do it.” My mother said this in an accusatory tone, as if a crime had been committed. “I gave him a book about cars one tim
e when he was eight. He memorized the whole damn thing, then went down the street and worked for the mechanic for weeks so he could learn about repairing cars. I had my favorite designer make him a mechanic’s outfit. He was precious. I thought he’d take a quick gander at the book and he and I could go to car shows and he’d get a kick out of gaping at the skimpily dressed models and Corvettes, but no. He was not interested in boobs. He was interested in the consistency of motor oil and carburetors.”
“And all aspects of science, brains, numbers, and equations are of interest to him,” I added, to distract the teachers from my mother’s boob comment.
“Shouldn’t a boy be sneaking girly magazines or something?” She leaned forward, her bob swinging. “That would be much more normal.”
I kicked her with my toe.
The teachers were stunned with the famous movie star and strange things flowing from her mouth.
Mary Cho, his AP History teacher, cleared her throat. “He’s in four AP classes and has As in all of them. Since he’s had different AP teachers the last couple of years, he has had somewhat of a different learning experience. Different essay topics, books, pacing. The research papers I get from him are the best I’ve seen. Ever. I’ve taught twenty-five years.”
“He writes at a graduate level for his English essays, too.” His English teacher, Evelyn Pops, fiddled with her long fingers. She was obsessed with Jane Austen, even belonged to a fan club. “His analysis, his comparisons . . .”
“Last night he compared a whole bunch of chemicals to each other.” My mother sighed, but I knew she was pleased on the inside. “I had to sit and listen for two hours. I had three glasses of wine. Things started to swim at the end, rhodium, tungsten, gallium, actinium . . . it’s all dry and dreary.”
“He gets teased some,” Mr. Shimolo said.
“But kids seem to like him.”
“And he’s a tall kid, that helps. . . .”
“The other day, a kid told him he had a head like smashed Play-Doh, and another kid, a girl, a girl in the most popular group, you know there’s always that group, she tripped the kid straight-up.” Mrs. Pops grinned. “He landed on his face. And then”—her face was now perplexed—“Tate helped the kid up who had teased him.”